On August 25, 2008, we reviewed a collection of 15 different personal finance applications for the iPhone and iPod touch in a roundup entitled iPhone Gems: Every Personal Finance Application, Reviewed. This review contains a review of one application from that roundup; additional comparative details can be found in the original full story.

Accountr ($1) by Jeff Hale is a simple money management application that allows the user to keep track of a single account’s balance, placing transactions into categories and subcategories. The home screen of the application shows the current balance at the top, with recent transactions listed in the main portion of the screen, and the most recent on top. Each transaction listing shows the date, category, and subcategory on the left, and the amount shown to the right in either green for a deposit or credit and red for debits. Tapping a transaction takes the user to a view showing these same details in larger type, while offering an edit button to allow for editing of the transaction details. A similar edit button in the main window lets users delete transactions.

Large Earn and Spend buttons at the bottom lead the user to screens to select the category and subcategory for new transactions. The first time we opened Accountr, this navigation style caused issues. It’s not immediately apparent that users have to make their own categories and subcategories before they can enter a transaction, a problem that left us staring at a blank screen before we figured out that the add button on the category page gets the ball rolling. Once a category and subcategory have been selected, the user only has to enter the amount of the transaction, then save.

Although it doesn’t claim to do anything more than it does, Accountr’s simplicity is hampered by its interface. The type used to display the transaction’s date in the main screen is extremely small and colored grey, making it hard to read from any distance. Having to dig through categories and subcategories in order to add a transaction is unorthodox at best, and the app brings up a large, albeit brief, splash screen every time it’s launched, something that becomes more of a nuisance when trying to quickly enter a transaction. With similar applications sporting better interfaces and more functionality at similar or cheaper price points, we can’t recommend Accountr.

Editors' Note: iLounge only reviews products in "final" form, but many companies now change their offerings - sometimes several times - after our reviews have been published.
This iLounge article provides more information on this practice, known as revving.